The Jesus Revolution: Seeing My Story on the Screen

Because I actually wrote about the film The Jesus Revolution prior to it hitting the theaters, I was surprised when a blog reader asked me if I was going to write a response to actually seeing it.

A response? My response was emotional. Even though the film was the story of evangelist and Pastor Greg Laurie, and even though the film was the story of Pastor Chuck Smith, and even though the film was the story of hippie evangelist Lonnie Frisbee … it was my story they were telling on the big screen.

I’m where I am today and do what I do because of what happened in those years in Orange County, California. I even got to meet several of the people portrayed in the movie in real life in many visits to the area, and at one point was interviewed for the job of Assistant Editor of Contemporary Christian Music magazine. To say I was immersed in all this would be serious understatement.

I’ve only experienced sensory overload a few times in my life. (For comparison purposes, one was at the New Year’s Eve fireworks at Epcot in Disney World.) But in the only thing that held me back on Saturday was an abundance of respect for the other patrons at the cinema. Otherwise, I wanted to wail. Those events shaped my life. Dang! It hit me hard!

And, I am not alone. I’m hearing this deep, gut response — or hints of it, since we’re guys, right? — from other people. Powerful. Impactful.

My wife is on staff at a local church, and lately I’ve been trying to be supportive at another nearby church in our community. I went back to the former church on Sunday for a special service they were having, and the pastor spontaneously decided to open the service with a song by the group LoveSong which is titled Two Hands, which he’d heard the day before at the theater.

It’s not the first time he’s played guitar in church. Probably closer to the thousandth if you count all the churches he has ministered in. But as I reminded him after lunch, the very fact that he was able to stand in church holding a guitar — a few Catholic folk masses notwithstanding — traces back to the revolution described in the film.

In other words, it wasn’t just the time the hippies came to church, but it was the time the guitars came to church. And it wasn’t just that, but it was also the time casual dress came to church.

And it was the time revival came to church. People turned to Christ. Which is the point, after all. The Jesus Revolution — the actual events, not the film — is considered the last great outpouring in modern church history. How could I watch that play out onscreen and not be overcome by the emotion of it all.

What would I say in more of a review sense?

They captured the times well. The addition of the reporter for TIME Magazine as a tertiary character was brilliant. The people were believable. The other components that make a film more than just ‘good’ were there in the right places. I would watch the whole thing again.

Driving back, my wife pointed out that though both the Christian and mainstream music of the day was represented, Chuck Smith’s pre-revolution church wasn’t shown as having any music at all. I’m sure there was old church piano or organ hiding somewhere, but we didn’t see or hear it. (It’s like there wasn’t any music at all in those years!)

And that is also, I believe, just the point. While people underwent spiritual transformation and became Christ followers, a pivotal part of the revolution was expressed in music, just as music was a central component earlier this month at Asbury University.

That music revolution reverberates in the capital “C” Church today in the forms of Contemporary Christian Music, and in Modern Worship.

As someone who participates regularly in both, how can I not be overwhelmed with thanks to those who led the way?

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Special heartfelt thanks to the people behind faithfilms.ca for arranging for us to see the movie. Faith Films provides marketing and publicity support for Christian productions screening in Canada and is part of Graf-Martin Communications.

5 Decades Apart: The Jesus Revolution and the Asbury Revival

I’m not a conspiracy kinda guy, so I don’t for a minute believe that the producers of The Jesus Revolution, releasing this weekend in theatres, were in any way involved in the revival which broke out on February 8th in Wilmore, Kentucky at Asbury University.

But it’s an interesting convergence; it’s excellent timing

The Jesus Revolution was the cover story in TIME Magazine in June, 1971. Explo ’72, the first major Christian festival, happened in the year it’s named after. But if we stretch a bit, we could say that by 1973, The Jesus People, Jesus Music and The Jesus Movement really started to intensify.

Which puts it 50 years prior to the events of this month.

Back to the present: On February 8th, a chapel service started at Asbury which didn’t end until it was suspended for 11 hours on February 16th in order to work out “sustainability” details. Those overnight breaks have continued. Wilmore, Kentucky has a population of only 6,000, and well over 20,000 people have been drawn to the campus to experience the event at its ground zero, with lines to get in the main building, or other facilities carrying the event on closed-circuit stretching half a mile. Town officials have had to close access to the town and post signs stating “Revival Over Capacity.”

Today it’s back on, and contrary to most of the early days of the event when they were trying to contain it somewhat, it is available to stream live.

The first two days — before the media heard about it — the chapel service was a mix of music and times of personal confession, prayer and testimony. The confession element is a recurring theme in recorded revivals throughout church history.

But much of the event since has been music-driven. Listening last night was basically hearing a worship music soundtrack of a generation. There have been no sermons. No special guests. No introductions. No extravagance. No unusual manifestations.

That last distinction is important. There has been nothing that would characterize this as a charismatic outpouring. Nothing of what John Wimber would have called “signs and wonders.”

Asbury is a non-denominational school, but identifies as part of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. By February 13th, the event had spread to other schools.

The Jesus Revolution of the 1970s was also largely music-driven, but Contemporary Christian Music (or simply CCM as it became known) wasn’t the industry it is today and didn’t have the same marketing machinery. Spinoff events — Jesus ’75, the Fishnet festivals, the Creation festivals, etc. — advertised guest speakers front and center. Today, you have to dig deep into the advertising to find the speakers or seminar-leaders list, the musicians totally dominate the event, and are the main attraction for attendees.

But the early days were very grassroots, homespun and organic; not dissimilar to what’s going on in Kentucky et al as I type this. I can tell you, with absolute assurance, that you would not be reading this article were it not for how the wake of the Jesus Movement impacted me and nurtured my growing (and sometimes shaky) faith.

In many ways, my own life has consisted entirely of wanting to share the water from the well I found, whether that be sharing the music as an itinerant youth minister with a traveling video show, a coffee-house performer wholly dependent on the condition of the pianos at the church or venue, a seller of Jesus Music record albums, and later, a champion of Christian books and authors through promoting sales and writing reviews for various publications.

“Part one of the gospel is ‘taste and see;'” I was taught, and “Part two of the gospel is go and tell.'” My sphere of influence never reached far beyond my small corner of the world, but occasionally, especially through my writing, and the early iterations of this blog and its two year spinoff with Christianity Today, I was able to tell the stories of Christian musicians making a difference and using their art to point people to Jesus.

Music is a powerful force. And Christianity is “a singing faith.” The two verses of scripture that speak of “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” cause those to arise in one case out of the overflow of God’s word “dwelling in you richly” as the King James puts it, and in the other case out of being “filled with the Spirit.” Either way, it produces a song.

Of course, The Jesus Revolution is more than just a story of music. I haven’t seen the film as I write this, but it’s partly about a pastor who was willing to risk all to bring the love of Jesus to a new generation. It was in many ways radical for its time, until you think of all the social change that was taking place 1966-1969 in the wider world. The changes in fashion and hairstyles, the introduction of hallucinogenic drugs, the Vietnam war protests, the ‘Summer of love.’

All those things teed-up the conditions for Christian youth to find a voice; to find a response.

Asbury University is very different. Although the event is far from organized the college is going to great lengths not to associate it in any way with anything business or politically oriented. Some people arrived with shofars (the ram horns used in Hebrew and Messianic praise) and they were asked to restrain the use of them because people would conflate the event with the January 6th riot at the Capitol building in Washington. Fox News was politely asked not to come, and complied. Their lead reporter said, “…They’re doing something so right, so beautiful, so true that media coverage can’t enhance it and can only detract from it…God bless them for turning us down.”

Early on Brent Williamson wrote:

Nobody was in charge. There was no known leader. There was no known worship team. There was several different people who spoke and you could tell they weren’t in charge.
They rotated the singers and musicians every two hours or so.
There was a guitar, piano, and beat box. That was it.
They asked if you need to talk to someone to please take it into the lobby or outside.
No fancy lighting. Wood seats without cushion. Stained glass windows. The floor was concrete. There was NO words on a screen to sing from. No offerings.

I saw puddles of tears on the concrete. It was a wave of the Spirit that hit certain people at different times.
The altar was full non stop with people weeping and also worshiping at it too.
The Spirit of God was making the altar call.

Mark Swayze wrote:

So who are these college worship leaders at the Asbury Outpouring? Who sits on the “Worship Steward” team?
You will never know.
They are a nameless and faceless generation.
They are rebelling against the celebrity culture infiltrating the church.

Sarah Thomas Baldwin wrote:

Most of the people coming have no idea that their usher navigating the wheelchair through the rain has a Ph.D. and their prayer minister is a retired seminary professor. Most of the people don’t know how huge numbers of you have set aside your jobs, your family time, and your sleep to show up and direct people, check bags, and sometimes set aside your preference in musical style to be up late into the night in prayer. Many of you could preach and teach as you have done around the world and on the Asbury campuses. Yet you are so humble to take out the trash and stand out in the cold to get people inside. You have offered to do what you can and it has been loaves and fishes. We will never be the same.

Humility is a value that resonates with me. The 1970s comparison would be early Jesus Music musicians selling homemade albums out of the back of cars or their VW Microbus. Again, this was long before the CCM marketing machines emerged. The musical epicenter of the movement in southern California was relocated to Nashville, the heart of the music business.

Perhaps this is a cautionary tale for the people in Wilmore.

The Asbury participants however, seem to have managed to produce something that cannot be capitalized on; cannot be easily exploited. I’m sure there will be books on top of countless articles online. Maybe 50 years from now people will buy theater tickets for ‘The Asbury Revolution.’

We’ll have to see what it becomes.

In the meantime, find out everything you can about what’s going on a Asbury and where it leads.

Then, this weekend, watch the film and experience a youth revival that is still making a difference.

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Some of the quotations were sourced from the Facebook feed of Regent University’s Dr. Ewen Butler who teaches on Revival and Church History. The picture is from a short article by Craig Keener which appeared on Julie Roys’ website, click here to read. Other information gleaned from the Twitter hashtag, #AsburyRevival and there are some excellent, detailed articles linked there. Thanks also to David Spencer.

For the trailer for The Jesus Revolution film, click here. Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier) plays Rev. Chuck Smith. That alone is worth the price of the ticket! For the sometimes parallel history of CCM and today’s modern worship, check out this article posted here in 2008. 

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Writing, borrowing or compiling a fresh devotional each and every day for 12 years means that our sister blog (and now primary project) Christianity 201 has a huge back-catalog of devotionals on many subjects. For our February 21st piece, I went though every single article that covered the idea of revival, and highlighted several of them in a single piece. Click this link to read “On the Subject of Revival”

 

You Say You Want a Revolution

Review: The Jesus Revolution: How God Transformed an Unlikely Generation and How He Can Do It Again Today by Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn (Baker Books, 2018)

You know you’re getting older when the people, places and events which were part of your spiritual formation become the object of historical retrospectives. Having watched The Jesus Music movie before Christmas, and then recently completed Jesus and John Wayne, it seemed fitting that the next book in my stack was The Jesus Revolution which actually isn’t a new book, but was released four years ago before inspiring a curriculum study exactly one year ago. I guess it completed a trilogy of reminiscence.

I spent a few blocks of time in southern California between 1979 and 1988 and was privileged to have access to some of the major creators of what, by that time, was becoming less known as Jesus Music and more known as Contemporary Christian Music or CCM. (I was once interviewed for the job of Assistant Editor for the magazine of the same name. When you’re from Canada in the early 1980s, you should never agree to a lunch interview in a Mexican restaurant.)

This book is really three things. First it’s the story of what was going on the world, especially the United States, in the 1960s and ’70s. There is much detail provided, and at times I wondered how much was truly necessary to the two other elements of the book named below, but for those who didn’t live it, it does provide a broad picture of the cultural and political climate that shaped teens and twenty-somethings growing up in those years.

Second, and more importantly, it’s the story of The Jesus People, albeit the American, Southern California version as similar cultural forces were transpiring in the UK as well as other parts of the U.S. Orange County, California was indeed the epicenter; ground zero of a movement that the author places in a line of revivals in American church history going back to the 1800s,

Finally, it is the story of Greg Laurie, the evangelist and founder of Harvest Church in Riverside, California, which begat the Harvest Crusades. With two authors carrying this story, I wondered if it would work, but the two voices speaking this story seem to weave in and out seamlessly. If the book’s subtitle implies that God used “an unlikely generation,” then certainly he used “an unlikely candidate” to reach a literally untold number of people with a straight forward evangelistic challenge.

The story is set in the past, but with the perspective of today’s developments and hindsight. The current spiritual and cultural climate break in to the story at odd times to wake the reader to the impact today of what happened then. To that end, the book is somewhat didactic when appropriate such as in this instance toward the end of the book,

God grants revival. He grants it to those who are humble enough to know they need it, those who have a certain desperate hunger for Him. Only out of self-despair — a helpless understanding of the reality of sin and one’s absolute inability to cure it — does anyone ever turn wholeheartedly to God. That desperation is sometimes hard to come by in American, because it is the opposite of self-sufficiency. In the U.S., many of live under the illusion that our needs are already met, that maybe God is an add-on to our already comfortable existence… People don’t seek God when they are comfortable. (pp 232-3)

I love that analysis and the observation that those long-haired hippies were desperate for God. This is key to the book’s short epilogue, which questions as to whether we will see a youth movement like the Jesus Revolution again.

One can surely hope.

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Harvest Church continues to this day and is in no way related to Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago.

 

The Jesus Music: A Look at The Way We Were

Watching a movie about an aspect of 20th Century Christian history with which you were intimately involved is a daunting task. You never know how it’s going to impact you.

As I sat watching The Jesus Music (opening in theaters Friday) my first concern was that they would get the history right. Being involved in the early days of what is now called Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) often means hearing people getting the details wrong.

But such was not the case, in fact, they did their homework well, as they also did when it came to finding film clips, stills, and archived interviews. This is, overall, a high quality documentary.

My next takeaway was seeing people who were friends back in the day, people who, even now, might recognize me by name if I walked into a room. People with whom I corresponded.

To that end, I wasn’t prepared for the lump in my throat and the tears starting to form, especially during the first half hour of the film. Those early Jesus Music days were telling my story, and opening up associations from deep in the recesses of my memory.

Because of that, I wished they had spent more time on the period starting in the late ’60s and most of the 1970s. That was the true Jesus Music era and the rest of the film was more focused on the earlier days of CCM as it came to be.

It also helps if you know who is speaking onscreen. There were names in the bottom corner — often for too short a time — but no voice-over announcer to describe their relationship to the story. This is a nostalgia documentary for people like me. It’s also a story of the growth of Jesus Music in America; references to what was taking place in the UK — which were significant — were quite sparse.

While other reviewers will focus on the artists, for me it was the narratives from some of the behind-the-scenes people, such as John Styll from CCM Magazine, author John Thompson, or pastor Greg Laurie who had front row seats on the birth of Jesus Music. Those people, along with pioneers Tommy Coomes, Chuck Girard, and Glenn Kaiser made the movie for me, as did the very candid revelations from Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and the guys from DC Talk.

The filmmakers also highlighted the influence that Explo ’72 in Dallas had on the explosive proliferation of the music, and in particular, the wholehearted endorsement of Rev. Billy Graham; an endorsement given even as other evangelists, such as Jimmy Swaggart, were condemning the very notion of Christian rock.

In addition to following the trail from Jesus Music to CCM, the movie touched briefly on the path from CCM to Modern Worship.

There’s no denying that the Christian music industry is huge. The film suggested that the commercial influences that plagued CCM at its peak weren’t present so much in modern worship. Not sure I agree with that one; it’s just that today the dark side of the industry has less to do with unit sales of product and more with who holds copyrights.

In one scene concerning the profit-driven nature of the industry, it seemed that as the genre being profiled got more commercial, the movie itself got more commercial. In one 15-second moment, a series of album covers and audio bites of songs played in succession, and all that was missing was the 800-number to call and order the album from Time-Life.

The producers were not afraid to delve into controversy, but chose to leave on a high note, suggesting that the conditions are presently ideal for another Jesus People revolution. In many respects, I hope that is true, especially if it gets back to the basics outlined in the film’s first 30 minutes or so.

There was also an acknowledgement of the fact that, Andrae Crouch notwithstanding, the history of CCM up to the present moment is still somewhat racially segregated.

Co-produced by K-LOVE, there is an underlying radio focus. Speculation as to whether Larry Norman’s often gritty lyrics could get played on today’s family-friendly Christian stations becomes moot when you consider that in a world of indie-artists, Christian radio is no longer the primary means by which many Christian musicians reach an audience.

Again, this movie was well done. I am thankful for the opportunity to preview it, and they were indeed telling my story and telling it well.

I am also very grateful for the role that Jesus Music played in my life and where I am today is a direct product of the seeds planted by those artists all those years ago. 

Watch the trailer for The Jesus Music

In The Days Before Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)

Today on Christianity 201, I used a very, very old song as a springboard for the discussion which followed. I’ve left some of the introduction intact below, but this won’t be a mirror of what appears there later today. [Ed. note: He changed his mind on that!]

The song was written by Ralph Carmichael. It’s called “A Quiet Place” Below is the original, though I used a different group at C201 today because the volume seemed low on this one.

Musically it’s almost elevator music by today’s standards. But then, it was the beginning of something new. Released through Light Records there was a small advertisement on the back if you wanted to buy the music book. No, not that kind of music book with the melody line and guitar chords. This was the music book for your choir, with the pieces charted in SATB 4-part choral notation.

CCM was still a long way off.

Larry Norman may have been asking ‘Why should Satan have all the great tunes’ — that’s exactly how he said it, right? — and Andrae Crouch and the Disciples may have been jamming in his dad’s church auditorium, but when it came to mainstream, Ralph Carmichael officially gave the church permission to take a big tiny step towards the Top 40.

I’m fairly certain you could get the album free with a 2-year subscription to Campus Life magazine.

If you want to experience the whole album, here’s the link:

…At C201 today, the reason I chose the song “A Quiet Place” is because I think most Evangelicals think of their daily Bible reading as devotions and not so much quiet time. Perhaps I’m wrong vis-a-vis the local church community where you find yourself right now. But you can read all that in the intro below, and catch the remainder of the reading at 5:30 PM EST at C201…

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On second thought, once I started posting this, I decided to just share the whole thing after all. There are a couple of really good links I didn’t want Thinking Out Loud readers to miss.

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For most readers here, the content would be described as devotionals or devotional readings. I have always taken the meaning to refer to this practice or spiritual discipline that we do out of devotion to God.

Working in the world of Christian publishing however, I frequently encounter people — a large number from a Catholic background or people who have had exposure to recovery programs — who refer to devotional books as meditations or meditational readings. I do like the idea that one doesn’t just read the words and close the book and walk away. Rather one ruminates or chews the text in their mind.

There is however a third term which, although I am very familiar with it, isn’t something we’ve used here: quiet time.

This song, written by Ralph Carmichael, was part of a collection that for many people mark the beginning of what we call Contemporary Christian Music. But we’re here to look at the lyrics.

There is a quiet place
Far from the rapid pace
Where God can soothe my troubled mind

Sheltered by tree and flower
There in that quiet hour
With him my cares are left behind

Whether a garden small
Or on a mountain tall
New strength and courage there I find

Then from this quiet place
I go prepared to face
A new day with love for all mankind

A search for scripture verses about having a quiet time takes us to these:

…he delights in the teachings of the LORD and reflects on his teachings day and night. – Psalm 1:2 GW

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. – Matthew 6:6 NIV

…Jesus insisted that his disciples get back into the boat and cross to the other side of the lake, while he sent the people home. After sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone. – Mathew 14:22-23 NLT

Early in the morning, well before sunrise, Jesus rose and went to a deserted place where he could be alone in prayer. – Mark 1:35 CEB

Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. – Joshua 1:8a NLT

and finally

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. – Luke 5:16 NIV

UK writer Daisy Logan has offered sixteen different ways we can improve our quiet time. Not all of these may work for you, but I encourage you to click here to read her suggestions.

The website for CRU (formerly Campus Crusade) looks at several different elements your quiet time can contain, including opening your Bible and methodically studying a section of text, followed by four types of prayer. Click here to read their template for quiet times.

The website GotQuestions.org reminds us that,

Every believer needs a quiet time with the Lord. If Jesus Himself needed it, how much more do we? Jesus frequently moved away from the others in order to commune with His Father regularly…

The length of the quiet time does not matter, but it should be enough time to meditate on what was read and then pray about it or anything else that comes to mind. Drawing near to God is a rewarding experience, and once a regular habit of quiet time is created, a specific time for study and prayer is eagerly looked forward to. If our schedules are so full and pressing that we feel we cannot carve out some time daily to meet with our heavenly Father, then a revision of our schedules to weed out the “busyness” is in order.

I realize that for some people, the thought of pausing at a certain time each day, or even the use of the word meditation triggers thoughts of Eastern religions. Got Questions addresses this:

A note of caution: some Eastern religions that teach the principles of meditation include instructions on “emptying the mind” by concentrating on repeating a sound or a particular word over and over. Doing so leaves room for Satan to enter and to wreak havoc in our minds. Instead, Christians should follow the advice of the apostle Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Filling one’s mind with these beautiful thoughts cannot help but bring peace and please God. Our quiet time should be a time of transformation through the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2), not through the emptying of them.

I want to invite you to listen to the short song one more time. This time think about what ought to be the result of our quiet time with God:

Then from this quiet place
I go prepared to face
A new day with love for all mankind

The fruit or benefit of time spent in study and prayer will come out in our lives in ways that will affect others as well as ourselves.

The Most Uncomfortable Seat I Ever Had at Church

Arriving at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California for the first time in late 1979, I decided I wanted to have the whole Jesus People experience.

Calvary is known as the birthplace of Maranatha! Music and the Pacific Ocean baptisms in Pirate’s Cove. It’s the place where rather than hear the old guard complain about the rivets in the hippies’ blue jeans scratching the pews, they simply removed the pews.

But by the time I got there, the Sunday morning service was fairly traditional. They sang from Inspiring Hymns, the same hymnal my parent’s church used back home. Despite what the band Love Song sang about the “Little Country Church” with “Long hair, short hair, some coats and ties;” there were actually a lot of men in sport coats and ties. It took some adjusting.

One remnant still remained from the earlier days in their older building — which by that time was the Maranatha! Village bookstore — and that was the remnant of people who sat on the floor at the front.

I had to discretely shift my position a few times during the sermon. The floor was plush carpeting but I wasn’t a little kid who could sit cross-legged for an hour school assembly. I think I was somewhat sprawled out by the final one-third of the message. Probably a bit undignified, but I wasn’t alone.

Despite a sore back for the rest of the day, I’m glad I did it. I got to share a piece of history. I feel connected to those just a bit a older than me who sensed a call to the “church on the edge of town” to worship with others of their generation.

photo: Calvary Chapel via this story at Premiere Christianity (UK)

My Favorite Worship Song Doesn’t Work Congregationally

The blue Pacific on a summer’s day
Rushing in to meet the yellow sand
The view’s terrific I see Monterrey
Lookin’ mighty fine from where I stand
The water dances in the sun’s reflection
A thousand silver birds fly in my direction
Now isn’t it beauty, isn’t it sweet perfection?

If someone were to ask me my favorite worship song, I suppose I could easily think of songs like “Shout to the Lord,” “Majesty,” “How Great Is Our God,” “Revelation Song,” and a number of hymns including “Our Great Savior,” which you may or may not know.

But not every praise song is meant to be sung congregationally, and we do ourselves a disservice when we try to take every great worship chorus and force congregations to sing songs that perhaps don’t match up with their personal expression of adoration to God. Sometimes we’re just meant to listen to someone else’s thoughts.

The song embedded below is an example of that. The late Tom Howard wrote “One More Reason” with a first verse that expresses the beauty of God in creation that he is familiar with growing up in California, with its references to the Pacific Ocean and Monterrey; the spirit of which was captured by the person who made the tribute video. To sing this in our church, the first thing I would want to do is make that verse more generic, but I’ve never got around to writing different lyrics because I rather enjoy the song just the way he wrote it.

The sky is singing, the earth proclaims
Always one more reason to praise Your name.

How Do You Spell Determination?

There’s an audio clip at the end of this post which may or may not interest some of you. What I want to focus on is not only what’s on that 16-minute audio but also how it came to be there.

The bookstore my wife and I own inadvertently sponsored a YouTube channel. I mean that in the sense that we wanted to call it “The Lost Song Collection” and post songs from the Jesus Music era, a term referencing the days before CCM was called Contemporary Christian Music. Things nobody else had posted. Things sourced from vinyl records. But before we knew what we were doing, the channel had been named after the bookstore and it was too much of a hassle to change it.

One of the things we posted there was a demo of a Christian radio show from that time period, “A Joyful Noise” by Frank Edmondson under the on-air name Paul Baker. But I also wanted to include another I owned, “The Rock That Never Rolls” with Dale Yancy aka Brother Dale.

This was a demo of a Christian radio show from the ’70s that would be scheduled on non-Christian radio stations which at the time had obligations to include public service or religious content, but didn’t want to lose their regular listeners with programming that was uncool. Program demos like this did not include songs, or if they did, the songs were “telescoped” to allow station Program Directors to hear a variety of content in a short time. The show originated in Burlington, VT.

At the time this was produced, the show was airing in Chicago, Montreal, San Diego, Raleigh, Tulsa, Cincinnati, Dallas, Nashville and Honolulu. The show included interviews, comedy, music and mock commercials. It was sent to me back in the day because we were hoping to find a way to bring the show to Ontario. I really wish there were more shows like this today, though Brant Hansen’s work comes to mind.

I looked high and low for my copy of this. It had been sent to me on a five-inch reel-to-reel in a box with a bright green sticker, but I couldn’t locate it, and wasn’t sure what I would do anyway, since the R2R machine has been sitting under my desk unused for 25+ years.

But I knew I had a cassette of it, which, thanks to a flooded basement, we found last week. The problem was, the cassette was jammed and then broke. Fortunately, my wife is very determined.

First, she tried to loosen up the tape in the cassette housing, and when that didn’t work she broke the tape free of the plastic case. At that point I thought the project was doomed. Then she tried to spool the tape off so she could load it into another case, but it kept sticking. So she soaked the tape in water to loosen it up and then spooled the cassette tape on to an empty film canister, and then reloaded into the other housing, sealed the case and placed it in a cassette player and converted it to digital. There are some skips where part of the new cassette continued to jam, but the overall sound quality is surprisingly good for something which survived a flood.

There are probably archaeologists who haven’t gone to as much trouble to reconstruct a relic as Ruth did to restore this. Or crime scene investigators. (Please do not start mailing us your problem cassettes.) I wish we’d taken some pictures.

My wife hates to back down from a fight. And she knew it meant a lot to me. That’s the main thing; she knew it would make me happy. So she took a half day to attempt what I considered impossible. And she knew that if I thought the radio show was all that interesting, someone else might as well. 

I guess radio shows like this really mattered to me back then. While radio isn’t a force in either evangelism or introducing new music as it once was, this represented a golden age for what was then Jesus Music. You never knew who was listening and stories abounded of people who credit their life turnaround to randomly tuning the AM or FM dial.

So how do I spell determination? R-u-t-h. She pulled it off after all. I should never have doubted!

Sit back and travel back in time and enjoy, The Rock That Never Rolls: The Sound of Eternity…

The video ends with some classic KYMS radio jingles which were on the end of the cassette.

CCM: Where it All Began

Next time you’re in the music department of a Christian bookstore, or listening to 20 The Countdown Magazine, realize you’re seeing/hearing the after effects of a movement which goes back a couple of generations. Today’s featured videos are all from the same YouTube user channel, Donald Gordon, Jr.

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More from the Lost Songs Channel: CCM’s Early Days

Part two of the top-ranking songs on the YouTube channel I manage for Searchlight Book. See yesterday’s post for the top 5 Click through to YT for descriptions. And when I say top-ranking, realize this is a rather obscure YT channel. These are very old CCM songs and the criteria for choosing them was to select songs that had not been uploaded (that we could find) on the day they were posted.

#6 Noel Paul Stookey – Building Block (1982)

#8* Danniebelle Hall – Work The Works (1974)

#9 Wayne Watson – Born in Zion (1985)

#10 Craig Smith – God and Man at Table are Sat Down (1979)

#12* John Fischer – Righteous Man

*Items 7 and 11 on this site are spoken-word (non-music) extras.

Yes, John Fischer had two songs on this list. I always felt the chorus of the one featured today, Righteous Man, would make a great song for Promise Keepers.